Nearly one in four part-time workers want to work more hours:abs (Media Release)

MEDIA RELEASE

March 24, 2004

Embargoed: 11:30 AM (AEST)

48/2004

Nearly one in four part-time workers want to work more hours:abs

Just under one in four part-time workers want to work more hours, according to new figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

In September 2003, there were 610,700 part-time workers who wanted to work more hours. This represented nearly one-quarter (23%) of the 2,689,200 part-time workers, and just over 6% of the 9,570,600 people employed in Australia.

Of the 610,700 part-time workers who wanted to work more hours:

49% (300,400) had looked for work with more hours in the previous four weeks

86% (527,700) were available to start work with more hours in the week prior to the survey or within the next four weeks

58% (355,000) wanted to work fulltime.

A higher proportion of male part-time workers (30%) wanted to work more hours than female part-time workers (20%). Nearly three-quarters (73%) of male part-time workers wanting more hours wanted to work full-time, compared to 50% of females.

On average, part-time workers looking for, or available to start work with more hours, wanted an additional 15.3 hours per week. Males wanted to work more additional hours (17.3 hours) than females (14.1 hours).

The most common steps taken by the 300,400 people who had been looking for work with more hours were 'contacted prospective employers' (65%), 'asked current employer for more work' (58%) and 'looked in newspapers' (57%). The most commonly reported main difficulty in finding work with more hours was 'no vacancies in line of work' (22%).

Further information is in Underemployed Workers, 2003 (cat. no. 6265.0).

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